Untold
wealth is there for the man who will work and wait, land rich beyond the
dreams of fertilizer. But it costs about eighty dollars an acre, I am
told, to clear forest-land after it has been cut over. It is not a
project, this Northwestern farming, to be undertaken on a shoestring.
The wilderness must be conquered. It cannot be coaxed. And a good many
hearts have been broken in making that discovery. A little money--not
too little--infinite patience, cheerfulness, and red-blooded
effort--these are the factors which are conquering the Northwest.
I like the Northwest. In spite of its pretensions, its large cities, its
wealth, it is still peopled by essential frontiersmen. They are still
pioneers--because the wilderness encroaches still so close to them. I
like their downrightness, their pride in what they have achieved, their
hatred of sham and affectation.
And if there is to be real progress among us in this present generation,
the growth of a political and national spirit, that sturdy insistence on
better things on which our pioneer forefathers founded this nation, it
is likely to come, as a beginning, from these newer parts of our
country.
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